I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party's nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you -- and everyone who supported me -- a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I'm going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

"Happy post-primary. It is final...finally, and Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Somewhere inside me the swells of relief are meeting up with the waves of excitement and pride - but I'll be damned if I can unearth them to show you. See, anticlimatic is a mild description of what I'm feeling. Fatigued - too cliche. Weary - too connotated. Like a steak once pink and juicy left on the grill too long, I'm just plain charred by the past few months..."

In Hillary a la carte, Gloria Pan is, if anything, blunter. After extolling Sen. Clinton's virtues, she takes aim at the entourage in an imaginary conversation with Sen. Obama:

"We totally get it: Hillary et al is probably more than you want to or could swallow. What if, however, in exchange for making her your Number Two, Harold [Ickes] has to go serve in the Middle East for a few years, preferably in a part of the desert where the cellular service is spotty? And Bill [Clinton] could be US ambassador to England and hang out with old pal Tony, if he can get over Tony making George his new BFF before Bill’s seat in the Oval Room was barely cold. With both these dudes out of the country, you could have Hillary à la carte (with a little Chelsea on the side)."

Lefty BlogHer Contributing Editor Morra Aarons, equally blunt and a veteran of John Kerry's 2004 campaign, has moved on to what will win Democrats the election in November: Hillary Clinton isn't macho enough to be VP

What I'm not seeing much of, yet anyway, is an echo of the poll CBS News released yesterday about the fundamental difference Hillary Clinton's candidacy has made for women in public office.

"Hillary Clinton's campaign as the first serious female contender for the Democratic presidential nomination represents a shattering of the glass ceiling in presidential politics, a new CBS News poll shows. Most voters think that win or lose, her candidacy will make it easier for other women to run for president.

"Sixty percent of men and 76 percent of women agree that Clinton's candidacy will make it easier for future women to run for president.

"The historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy is reflected in the bipartisan nature of voters’ views on this question..."

So -- what do you think? Will Hillary's letter build bridges? Should she be VP or not? Is it possible to recruit her millions of supporters - or will they default to Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate?

And one last question: Do you think more women will run for office now that Hillary has? Will you?

“As a cattle rancher, I recognize a stampede
when I see one. I haven’t seen this kind of excitement since I worked
on Robert Kennedy’s campaign in 1968.” ~Montana Democratic Party Chairman Dennis McDonald of Melville, as quoted by the Missoulian

Barack Obama swept Montana's Democratic yesterday. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who watching the next state over, Idaho, since New Year's. If you weren't, however, you should be reaching for the smelling salts.

Here's how I learned about Obama's deep hold on the Big West: I took my family up to Idaho to ski with friends in February. As we drove from Boise to Tamarack, my friends told me about the standing-room-only crowd that had waited to hear Sen. Obama when he visited Boise in January. The looooong lines in which people waited outside the Taco Bell Arena at Boise State (in serious cold mind you) to hear Obama. Who kept waiting outside even after the arena was filled to capacity.

They talked, I gaped. Who'd have thought it possible? People talk all kinds of stereotypical trash about Montana (thank you, Ted Kaczynski), but I always thought my home state's crazy paled in comparison to actual facts about Idaho. I grew up hearing, knowing about Idaho's little Aryan Nation problem. Before cable television, before the Internet, before you could buy cowboy boots without zippers in California malls, Idaho was a closed culture. How closed? Closed enough that you could depend upon Californians getting run off if they were stupid enough to fish on private land and keep their license plates on the van. Two friends of mine got married and moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boise, one of them a sixth-generation Idahoan, a descendent of Basque sheepherders, a prodigal son of the Spud State returning home with degrees and better earning potential. The reception he and his new wife got? A businesscard anonymously tucked into their mailbox: "Welcome to Idaho. Now go home! Brought to you by the Idaho Natives Association." And this is the reception the white people got.

So I watched the video. This I gotta hear, I thought. Especially given how Idaho has changed -- yeah, there's an influx of new jobs, from Costco to HP to Starbucks, and you can even fly from Oakland to Boise non-stop these days. New blood, I thought, new ideas, just like at home in Missoula.

I was so wrong.

Idaho is populated by exactly the same people it always was: Plenty of hard-working folks, whiter than the average state (but don't overlook the growing Latino population), all with a little dash of the crazies who make headlines. And Idahoans, like so many others just happen to respond to Obama's message -- and its delivery. The senator opened that night in the Taco Bell Arena with a list of local thank-yous capped by a sincere note of memorial to an LDS church leader. Then he openly acknowledged that he doesn't always know what party means any more, but it may matter less than being utterly ashamed of Guantanamo and believing that the government must take an active role in creating health care options at least as good as those enjoyed by members of Congress. Then he went on to talk about race, individual responsibility and his personal investment.

"Change in American does not happen from the top down. It happens from
the bottom up. I was certain that we are not as divided as our politics
would suggest." ~ Barack Obama

Bottomline: Obama blew the minds of even his detractors -- take this blogger, who calls himself "Bubblehead" in Meridien, Idaho, says it better than I:

"Senator Obama came to Boise early this morning, and drew over 14,000 people to hear his stump speech. Let me repeat -- he drew over 14,000 in Boise, Idaho.
I'm still standing pat on my prediction that Sen. McCain will beat Sen.
Clinton in the general election, but if the Democrats are smart enough
to nominate Sen. Obama, I think he'd win in November.

"Don't get
me wrong -- there's no way any Democrat wins Idaho's electoral votes in
the fall. But if he can draw that many people here in Boise, it means
he's tapped into something the country hasn't seen in a while;
something to which I, as a realist, am apparently immune. I watched his
speech on TV, and wasn't really that impressed. People who were there,
however, reported that they were completely overwhelmed by his
sincerity. Sincerity doesn't win wars, but it can win votes. If Sen.
Obama can get the nomination, I think it'll be time for Republicans to
focus on keeping at least 41 votes in the Senate."

Still wondering how Sen. Barack Obama delivered (fill in name of big West state here)? Watch and learn -- this speech is a stunner. I think if I typed it up people would say "NO, you can't say THAT!?" And yet he does here, in an amazing moment in electoral history...do you agree with me?

After years of being told "I've never met anyone from Montana before!" my home state of fewer than one million people will have a high profile Tuesday when voters in Montana and South Dakota (with even fewer inhabitants) go to the polls to decide which Democratic nominee gets their combined 31 delegates.

But we're not here today to talk about the Election 2008 horse race. Given the divisive acrimony created by the ongoing battle for delegates between the Clinton and Obama campaigns, I think it's time we focus our community's attention on a policy issue that partisan bickering won't resolve: Iraq.

How appropriate for Montana and South Dakota, where we locals grow up familiar with the sight of yellow ribbons tied around trees. In Montana, where logging and mining have taken a beating in the past 30 years, and where a $6.55 minimum wage means a full-time wage-earner earns $13,624 a year for starters, military careers represent a fantastic opportunity for advancement and education. It's no surprise to me that Montana ranks second for the number of troops killed in Iraq per capita at 25 per million residents as of May 1.

That's why in this post, I'm going to focus on the candidates' answers to your Voter Manifesto questions about Iraq below:

BlogHer Voter Manifesto
Topic: Iraq
Questions:
1. Will you work to end the Iraq war before the 2008 election? If so, how?
2. The war is draining our country’s finances, and even with a significant troop pullout, the costs will not end soon. How do you propose to keep paying for the costs of war?
3. What are you physically going to do to help the Veteran's Administration and soldiers in need, instead of just paying lip service?
Read all 12 questions

I chronicle answers by Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama in their own words and in pretty excruciating detail below.

I have to share that, when it comes to caring for veterans, I can only read these opinions with the eyes of a woman whose best friend from fifth grade shipped off to Germany after our high school graduation. I was lucky enough to go straight to college. She went straight into the Army, started her down a path that resulted in her earning a Ph.D. in German; today she leads the town's high school German program.

I'm relieved to see action plans for veterans in all three candidate planks, specific plans with voting records and dollar amounts next to them. John McCain's plans for the future are less well articulated, but given his decades-long voting record on the subject of veterans, I'm satisfied that I know where he stands. I think both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama chart strong, clear plans to reversing the abysmal record of health service to veterans that we saw with the shameful legacy of Walter Reed. The key with any new administration will be rewarding news organizations like The Washington Post to continue to watchdog this essential issue.

As for Iraq? Nothing speaks more loudly than the stark contrast between Sen. McCain's language and that of Senators Obama and Clinton, between the Democrats' immediate plans for initiating withdrawal if they take office -- not to mention Sen. Obama's ongoing opposition for the war -- and Sen. McCain's strong belief that the latest surge has been "paid off" and that "those gains would be lost if we we were to...withdraw most of our troops" at this time.

Enough of my impressions -- I want to hear yours, once you read their policies. Here's what I found when I took these questions to the Web sites of presidential candidates, seeking their solution to Iraq here's what I found -- in alphabetical order, first by party and second by last name...

Blogs and guestblogging

Five-second therapy

Gail Sheehy"Women's liberation is not the end...it is the beginning of a lot of work. There is a whole world out there that needs to be totally transformed so that women and men can create, desire, build and play..."